My apologies for stealing
the following article verbatim from the New York Times -- time is of the
essence, the article is perfect & I'm too super swamped to write anything
original right now. Back in the early 90's we were privileged to meet Hardy and
Homer at The Residents' recording studio. They were both extremely nice and
normal. During our visit, we mainly spoke with Hardy, as Homer was busy
creating the cover objet d'art for the upcoming 'Our Finest Flowers' album.
Hardy and Homer, earlier this year
Hardy Fox, of the
Avant-Garde Band the Residents (Maybe), Dies at 73
Nov. 3, 2018
Hardy Fox,
a driving force behind the Residents,
an avant-garde band that playfully subverted the conventions of rock music for
decades while insisting on anonymity, which the group maintained by performing
in outlandish costumes, died on Oct. 30 at his home in San Anselmo, Calif. He
was 73.
His husband, Steven Kloman, said the cause was
glioblastoma.
The Residents were more than a band: They were
performance and visual artists, critics and deconstructors of pop culture, and
pioneers of music videos. Aspects of their cacophonous, gleefully absurdist
music presaged forms of punk, new wave and industrial music.
The band found a following even though its work could be
difficult, if not outright annoying.
“Strangled-sounding vocals have long been characteristic
of their recordings, along with crunching electronic drones that retain a
homemade, low-tech quality,” the New York Times pop music critic Robert Palmer
wrote in 1986.
Mr. Fox said the group’s sound was rooted in traditional
rock ’n’ roll and meant to challenge what the music had become.
Though the Residents admired “bubble-gum music” for its
“simplicity, its directness and its ability to affect the public,” he told The San Francisco Chronicle in 1997, the Residents wanted to
make something different: “Grating. Raw. Basically everything that rock ’n’
roll should be — and pop had ceased to be — with people banging on things and
creating a tribal attack on these bubble-gum songs.”
Residents shows were phantasmagoric
affairs, often incorporating video art, psychedelic sets and bizarre
costumes. Band members covered their heads with masks that looked like enormous
bloodshot eyeballs wearing top hats. The number of musicians onstage ranged
from three to nine.
Heavy metal bands like Kiss and Gwar, electronica D.J.s
like Deadmau5 and rappers like MF Doom have all performed in makeup, masks or
costumes, but they came along well after the Residents, and the public knows
their identities. That was never the case with the Residents.
Indeed, Mr. Fox always denied that he was in the group,
though journalists and fans suspected otherwise. But even if he was not
onstage, he was critical to the band’s success as a composer, producer and
engineer.
In 1976, he and three friends created what they called
the Cryptic Corporation to handle business, booking, distribution and public
relations for the Residents. Mr. Fox and Homer Flynn became the company’s
leaders after the two other founders departed in the early 1980s.
Both denied being members of the band.
“We are not the Residents,” Mr. Fox told the
Times music critic Jon Pareles in 1988. “But if we weren’t here to
market them, they’d just be lone avant-gardists making music for themselves.”
The group chose its name after sending a demo tape,
anonymously but with a return address, to Warner Bros. Records. It was rejected
and returned, addressed to “Residents.”
Their first recording, released in 1972, was a Christmas
record, of sorts, called “Santa Dog.” (Its title track featured the incantatory chorus
“Santa dog’s a Jesus fetus.”)
Their first complete album, released in 1974, was “Meet the
Residents,” its cover a parody of that of the early Beatles album
“Meet the Beatles.” It opened with a quick, strange take on the Nancy Sinatra
hit “These Boots Were Made for Walkin’ ” and, according to the band’s website, sold 40 copies its first year.
The Residents pressed on nonetheless, building a cult
following and selling albums through the mail. Mr. Flynn, in a telephone
interview, said the band released more than 40 studio albums over the years.
“By the time you figure in compilations and weird EPs and live albums, it’s
probably 60 to 70,” he said.
They include “The Commercial
Album” (1980), a collection of miniaturized pop songs, and “God in Three
Persons” (1988), a rock opera about a man who becomes romantically
obsessed with a conjoined twin, who, like the other twin, is a faith healer.
Mr. Flynn said the closest things the group had to
crossover hits were a 1986 version of Hank Williams’s “Kaw-Liga,”
which sampled Michael Jackson’s “Billie Jean” and which he said sold more than
100,000 copies, and a distorted, very loose interpretation of the Rolling
Stones’ “Satisfaction,”
which sold around 70,000 copies at the height of the punk era, in the late
1970s.
The Residents toured the United States, South America,
Russia, Japan and Europe, and their music and videos became the basis for art
shows, including one at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 2006.
The Residents recently released another album, “Intruders,”
and are planning a European tour for early next year.
Mr. Fox summed up the Residents’ philosophy in an
interview with the online magazine The Quietus in 2011.
“There is no necessity to take music terribly seriously
while you are being totally serious about it,” he said.
Hardy Winfred Fox Jr. was born on March 29, 1945, in
Longview, Tex. His father managed oil well leases, and his mother, Lillian
(Armer) Fox, was a nurse.
After a peripatetic childhood, he graduated from Rayville
High School in Rayville, La., in 1963. Mr. Flynn was his roommate at Louisiana
Tech University, from which he graduated in 1967 with a major in art and a
minor in business.
In addition to Mr. Kloman, whom he married in 2008 and
with whom he had homes in San Anselmo and Forestville, Calif., Mr. Fox is
survived by two sisters, Diane Pasel and Linda Perez.
Mr. Flynn said that Mr. Fox retired as president of the
Cryptic Corporation in 2016.
Mr. Fox had said that the main reason the Residents
insisted on remaining incognito was that they did not want celebrity to impede
their creativity.
He said of the group: “They claim they bare themselves
completely on records, that to try to talk about their music would only detract
from it. And they like for people to draw their own conclusions.”
He added, “I’ve always felt part of the reason, too, is
that the Residents’ music tends to attract some weirdos.”
Alain Delaquérière contributed research.
Follow Daniel E. Slotnik on Twitter:
@dslotnik
SAX & VIOLINS
